“How I have got through the week I couldn’t tell you. I should have been here days ago, but I was afraid. Let us go nearer to the sea. I was afraid of making you angry.”
“It’s better to keep one’s word.”
“Of course it is. And I am all the more delighted to be with you for the miserable week of waiting. Have you bathed?”
“Once or twice.”
“I had a swim this morning before breakfast, in pouring rain. Now you can’t swim.”
“No. I can’t. But why were you sure about it?”
“Only because it’s so rare for any girl to learn swimming. A man who can’t swim is only half the man he might be, and to a woman I should think it must be of even more benefit. As in everything else, women are trammelled by their clothes; to be able to get rid of them, and to move about with free and brave exertion of all the body, must tend to every kind of health, physical, mental, and mortal.”
“Yes, I quite believe that,” said Rhoda, gazing at the sea.
“I spoke rather exultantly, didn’t I? I like to feel myself superior to you in some things. You have so often pointed out to me what a paltry, ineffectual creature I am.”
“I don’t remember ever using those words, or implying them.”